Archive for May, 2008

Anytime you look anywhere on the web where people talk about making money online the most prevalent subject is most likely online paid surveys. People have so many questions about them; Do they really pay? Is it a scam? Do you have to pay something? We hope to answer some of those questions here. This post is basically Paid Surveys 101.

Doing online paid surveys is probably the easiest way to make money online. The bottom line is that companies out there want to know consumer’s opinions about everything from razors to ice cream and the easiest way for them to get a consumer’s opinion is through the internet. So how does the survey get from the company to you?

The thing is, the big company who wants to know your opinion usually doesn’t even write the survey. Most of the time a large, or small, corporation will hire a third party to conduct a study to find out what it is that consumers truly value. This third party company will develop a series of questions that they feel will give the corporation the right idea about what it is they are making. This third party company, the survey company, has a website where users can sign up at their will and take surveys. Usually you have to qualify for a survey since these survey companies usually look for a specific age group, sex, etc., but we’ll get into that later on.

Once you complete the survey, along with thousands of others who complete it, this company will pay you the incentive they promised for completing their survey and they collect all the information and statistically analyze all of it. They return these results to the corporation who will use the information to better market and/or form their product.

“But everyone says that the whole online paid surveys thing is a scam.”

I have heard and read this more times than I can remember. People are so skeptical about online paid surveys because of what they hear from their friends, and they should be. There are many companies out there who promise that you will make hundreds of thousands of dollars by completing surveys online. According to such companies, it is not a scam because in their disclaimer they clearly state that when claiming how much money you could make they used words that anticipate such earnings such as “might,” “could,” and “possibly.” So legally, these sites are not scams. Morally, well that is up to you to decide. The truth is, you could possibly make that much with online paid surveys. The circumstances under which you could make that much money might include doing online paid surveys as a full time job and putting much of your effort into it.

I’m sorry to say that the average online paid survey taker does not make hundreds of thousands from it, however it is very much possible to make a good amount. How much are we talking? I can’t speak for everyone however I can tell you that I used to make about $350 extra per week doing paid surveys while only putting forth about 1 to 2 hours per day, 5 days a week. That was about two years ago, so how much you can make now might even be more since the industry has grown greatly.

Since you know all about how the paid survey gets to you, you probably want to know how the money gets to you and why they would even want to pay you in the first place. When the corporation that wants to know about consumer opinions hires the third party company to conduct the study, they give them a set amount of money to cover all the costs of the study, including the money to pay survey takers. The third party company will offer you money to take their survey because, well let’s face it, there’s no way you would take one without an incentive. Somewhere along the line someone figured out that not many people truly enjoy taking surveys; unless you throw some money into the mix.

Usually when you first get a survey invitation you will take a short survey screener. This mini survey, which usually takes less than a minute, will help them determine if you are in the group they are trying to study. They may ask you things like your age, sex, ethnicity, and even some weird things; once I got asked if I had brown nose hair. If you qualify you will continue to take the main survey (whose length will vary, they will tell you how long it should take you). After completing the survey you will usually get paid right away, however sometimes you have to wait to be paid until the survey quota is filled and the survey is over. You may have to wait months. These companies are reputable companies and they will pay you what they promise if you complete what they ask of you.

So you’re sick of paid surveys; what else is there to do? Paid surveys are pushed as the most profitable way to make money online, but are they? What about paid to click, paid to surf, and paid offers? You read about all those people making $1,000 to $10,000 a week solely from filling out surveys and getting referrals, is it true?

For the past 3 years I have been working my butt off online to try and make some money with paid surveys. What have I gotten out of it? Pretty much just a headache and a few hundred dollars. I’ve filled out surveys left and right and I still don’t make what some sites promise. I’m sure this has happened to some of you as well.

What’s the problem then? I’m working harder than ever filling out surveys and it’s just not possible to make $1000 in a week. The trick is to find survey sites that pay for referrals. For instance; MySurvey.com pays the equivalent of $1.50 for each qualifying referral you send to them. You get them 10 referrals a week and that’s $15 a week. Say you do that for 10 sites offering a similar reward, then your effort turns into $150 per week.

The more sites you sign up with, the more opportunities you have to get referrals. Getting referrals is key to earning a substantial amount of money online. Even if you only get 5% of your referral’s earnings that would mean that for every $5 survey they take, you get a quarter. if you have 100 referrals averaging 2 $5 surveys a week per referral that’s $50 a week.

The top referrers have a little over 1,000 referrals; meaning they average around $500 to $1000 per week (between $26,000 and $52,000 per year). The only thing these people do is get referrals. I understand that it is easier said than done, however once they get referrals the money rolls in on auto pilot.

This is true for every type of online money making site. Whether it’s paid to click or paid offers, getting referrals is the way to earning big money. This isn’t to say that you should stop taking paid surveys and completing paid offers.

Imagine if all of your referrals simply stopped doing that and just aimed for getting referrals? You would earn no money. Taking just 2 $5 paid surveys a week lands you and extra $520 per year. Also, getting paid to click or read emails may only get you about $.25 a week for each site, but say you’re signed up at 10 sites; that’s an extra $130 per year.

Getting started with making money online is the hardest part. Once you get going you just have to sit back and check on things once in awhile.

For more information on making money online please check out our other posts!

When you look through our paid survey database you will find that there are hundreds of companies to sign up with. Which ones do you sign up with and how? There are so many questions you might have if you’re just starting out. This article will show you the basics on how to sign up with these companies, how many to sign up with, and how to get surveys sent to you.

First, you should make a new email address that you will use just for paid surveys. You can use free email services like Hotmail, GMail, or Yahoo! Mail. Another thing that would help you is to download an automated form filler like roboform . You will have to fill out tons of the same information over and over and anything that eases the process will be a big help.

After you have a dedicated email address, head over to the paid survey database and sign up with a company. When you register with one of these companies you will be asked to fill in a lot of personal information. It’s important that you are comfortable to give this information, so it’s usually a good idea to read each company’s privacy policy.

Once you fill out your personal information they may continue to ask you a few questions such as your race, sex, whether you smoke or not, and a few others. This is so they can determine which surveys you qualify for. By the end of the whole process you will usually get your own username and password for the site. This way, you can log in and view how much money or how many points you have accumulated. Most websites require that you have a certain amount accumulated before you can request payment.

Within a few days after signing up with a company you will usually get your first survey in your email! It’s actually a link sent to you that will lead to a website where you will take the survey.

Some surveys have screeners first, where they determine if you qualify or not. If you pass the screener, you will continue to take the remainder of the survey. Before you start the survey they will tell you approximately how long it should take you. From my experience, the average length of a survey is about 10-12 minutes. These shorter surveys usually pay between $2 and $5, however I have received some that paid as high as $25 in Amazon gift cards. Sometimes you will have to wait to be paid until the survey quota is filled, although a good portion of the time you get paid right away.

It is important that you sign up with as many companies as you can. It is tedious and takes a long time, however it will pay off in the end. Make a plan and sign up with 5 or 10 companies each day. You will see a vast increase in the number of surveys you receive, and the amount of money you can make. It’s also important to fill out as many surveys as you can, even if they aren’t for cash, but for prizes or an entry into a drawing. You’d be surprised at how many people actually win those drawings. It’s also important to complete as many surveys as possible because the company will realize that you are dedicated to taking their surveys, and they will send you more and usually send you ones that pay much more.

In conclusion, the best thing to do when you start out is stay organized and pace yourself. There’s no need to rush to sign up with as many companies as you can in one day. Take your time and have fun making money with these surveys.

Anytime you look online at sites that promise to help you make money they always stress the point of signing up with as many paid survey sites and as many other payment opportunity sites as possible. They say that this is the key to success with earning money online… But if it’s that easy then why isn’t everyone doing it?

You can’t be successful with earning money online unless you get all the survey invitations and opportunity news easily and efficiently. More importantly, you have to know all of your website login information in order to even start earning money with sites.

Signing up with a lot of sites is important in order to get a strong base of money making opportunities, however it is even more crucial to keep all information regarding these sites in a safe and common place.

My suggestion, from a great deal of past experience, is to get an email address at a reputable website, like Yahoo! or GMail, before you even begin to sign up with any type of online earning opportunity site. Use this email only for your online earning endeavors. Make sure the password is strong, including characters like !)*&^ and a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. Also remember to write down your email address and password on a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe.

Remember to check this email constantly and keep it organized by tagging unwanted mail as spam and always unsubscribe from emails that you never wanted to receive. Even check your spam mail folder because some mail that you want to receive gets placed in this folder. This will ensure that you get all the earning opportunities that you want, greatly increasing your chances of making money online.

Another suggestion to keep organized is to keep track of all your login information for each website. Using the username/password tracker on your browser is useful for quick login, however you’ll want to make sure you have a backup list off all your information just incase. Using a program like Microsoft Excel is a great way to organize all this information. Make separate columns labeled Site Name, Username, and Password, and record all this data every time you sign up with a new site. Be sure to print this information once in awhile so you have a hard copy; you never know when data can get erased.

I guarantee that keeping organized will help you succeed in making money online. Keeping organized is one of those things that I used to shrug off. When I read articles about it I would think “why did I waste my time reading that.” Finally I realized that I wasn’t wasting my time, it was just taking me a long time to get the hint. Good luck earning money online and I hope this advice will help you.

Last week I emailed the administration staff over at ReviewStream.com and asked for some inside information that I figured you might want to know. For those of you who are not familiar with the site, ReviewStream is a place where anyone can write a review about absolutely anything and get paid for it. It’s one of the only places on the web that pays consistently for user formed reviews.

I emailed the staff and here are some of the responses that I got;

Me: What country is ReviewStream based in?

ReviewStream: It’s owned by the group of private investors and is operated by the international team, located in US and EU. It was bought not far ago from the New Zealand company

Me: Do you have any future plans for expanding?

ReviewStream: Not a lot. We will be number 3 … Right after the Google and Wikipedia.

Me: What do you look for in a review?

ReviewStream: The main idea is to provide the consumer with the helpful information. Not the product or service description, but the information based on the personal experience. The criterias are individual in every case and depend on the item by itself, it’s location, current market conditions, etc.

Me: What determines whether a review receives the bulk rate or the full rate?

ReviewStream: Some items like recipes, movies, books, games, food, etc. we will not buy at a regular rate in most cases. Why ? Just imagine how many reviews were written about the Harry Poter movies for example.

How many reviews can be found about the businesses near your location? I doubt a lot of them.
Review these businesses, mentioning exact addresses, and we will be more than happy to buy these reviews at a regular rate.

For example we’re receiving a very opinioniated review of the Olive Garden restaurant. It’s well written and very helpful, but we can’t buy it at a regular rate because the location mentioned is something like : Chicago, IL.
But there are several Olive Garden restaurants in Chicago, IL. How the reader will determine what Olive Garden restaurant was reviewed ?
The exact location for the restaurants, hotels, local businesses, etc. will increase the review valuableness.

Another example: A perfect review about the kitchen appliance will not be valuable if this appliance was bought 10 years ago. But if you’re reviewing an appliance bought two months ago, it can be very helpful for others and sure we’re ready to buy such review at a regular rate.

It seems as though ReviewStream is looking for very specific reviews with as many details as possible. The staff was very friendly when I emailed them and asked them these questions. The folks over at ReviewStream are doing a great job with their website. Their reviews show up constantly on google search results and they pay their writers fairly well. Where else can you get $2.00 for writing something that takes only a few minutes?

If you’d like to give ReviewStream a try you can sign up here. It’s a great place to earn money online. I’ve been writing reviews for them since few months ago. I write about one per day and so far I have gotten about 10 $2.00 offers and a handful of bulk rate offers. I’ve had absolutely no problem with the site whatsoever and anytime I email the staff with a question I get a response within a day or so. I would highly recommend this site; it’s way better than earning money with paid to click sites, paid offer sites, etc.

Hoards of people have been emailing me asking about Bux.to. Some are wondering why it’s such a big deal while others are just wondering if it’s worth it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Bux.to, it’s a paid to click (PTC) website that recently opened it’s doors in June of 2007. They pay you $0.05 to sign up and $0.01 per ad you click. You can upgrade your account for $59.00 in order to be paid $0.0125 per ad you click. If you refer someone you are credited every time they click on an add. Basically it’s like every other PTC website out there… in a way.

I’m not going to dish out a bunch of bologna on how wonderful the site is just to gain referrals. I’ll tell it like it is. It’s true, I am a member and I would love for you to sign up under me; however you should be told the facts first…

Ok, here’s the thing; right off the bat Bux.to got in trouble for copying another PTC website called AdBux. A mini PTC website war broke out and Bux.to got “sabotaged” and kicked offline for a little bit and both website owners got their undies in a knot. After awhile they worked it out and Bux.to paid all their members and the site was up and running for good.

Seems like the owners of Bux.to would give up there… but no… just to prove AdBux wrong they made sure their website would become strong and full of nonstop clicking members. Basically Bux.to’s membership skyrocketed. They earned loads of money off of advertisers and paid their members… oh wait… did they pay their members?

Well, if everyone would have just read Bux.to‘s Terms of Service (of course the one thing that everyone loves to read) they would have realized that they would get paid after 30 days of requesting payment. Many people waited… then waited a little longer… They sent Bux.to support messages but heard back only days later with a response of “we’ll pay, just wait.” People eventually got paid about 60 days later. To fix this the Bux.to team changed the Terms of Service to say that payment will be made 60 days after it is requested.

What a relief… now you just wait 60 days and payment will be made. Yet there are still people I have talked to that have been waiting for payment since December of 2007. As of today that’s about 5 months ago! Someone must not be counting their days correctly.

On the other hand, and in defense of Bux.to, I have talked to some who have been paid. They have gotten checks in the $100’s and they swear by Bux.to. Ever since the whole AdBux vs. Bux.to “scandal” it’s hard to recognize a true complaint from an attempt at slander.

One thing that seems to be a plus over at Bux.to is the option to buy referrals. As many of you know, getting referrals in one of the only ways to make a decent amount of money with PTC sites. As many of you also know, it’s a pain in the ‘you know what’ to get referrals. There’s nothing easier than buying them. They’re a tad bit pricey (about $1.00 a piece with a minimum purchase of 15) and I’ve read some complaints that the referrals sometimes lack on clicking habits. However, I’ve also heard that Bux.to replaces non-active clickers.

So, as for the big question of whether it is worth joining? Yeah, it is. What’s it hurt if it cost you nothing to join the site? The only thing you can gain is a few extra dollars and the only thing you lose is about one minute online. If they don’t pay you it’s no sweat… as long as you didn’t put any money or put a lot of time into it. As with any PTC program online, don’t rely on it for an income source. Making money online is only fun and only works when you aren’t dead serious about it.

Please feel free to post your experiences with Bux.to here. If you’d like to give Bux.to a shot, sign up here!

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